


Do Like Your Mother Said Not to Do

by hedgerowhag



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Strangers, and smoking being a metaphor, featuring: boredom leading to dubious interactions, yes they are both women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-16 08:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14160810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: It makes Hux’s bored mind stutter and her cold-numb body shudder out of sleep. Sensations leak back inside her as she looks at the pale buildings of Chester Gate casted orange by the streetlights, like Grecian idols of lifeless marble. This street is pristine: carved hedges, lights out past nine and black cars at the curb though there is no one to take from the door. But a single balcony remains open tonight.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nereidlilies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereidlilies/gifts), [youdidnotseeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youdidnotseeme/gifts).



> inspired by ['nights with you' by MØ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwqpA_tQcXQ)
> 
> please appreciate [this illustration ](http://youdidnotseeme.tumblr.com/post/172457929956/ok-so-due-to-my-heart-being-weak-to-the-tragedy)by ydnsm. the mood of it is just so perfect and true to what ive had in mind <3

Episodes of Planet Earth playing on Hux’s laptop have become the centre of her attention during the night lectures. Sitting in front row, she gives the students a clear view of how much time their teaching assistant is dedicating to the material. No amount of coffee will keep Hux awake for a repeat of the information she has already formatted into notes, uploaded onto blackboard and simplified for the presentations.

Assuming the responsibility of a TA in the faculty of social sciences in a prestigious university of London, Hux expected daily pressure to perform. But, most nights, she is bored, meandering between useless tasks. Perhaps, this is why professors have called Hux overly ambitious.

When her mind dulls with boredom, Hux keeps herself in line with routine: morning is occupied with a regime of literature and self-assessment; midday is reserved for structuring classes for the week ahead; early evenings are spent on campus before the classes; night is a walk home through Regent’s park. The routine trains Hux to retain focus, avoiding the gradual congealing of laziness.

Thursdays are the evenings Hux remains on campus the latest. There is no sense of getting anything else done in what remains of the day and the walk between the fenced parks and white block building becomes an hour of thoughtless marching.

However, the calm order of the static routine doesn’t last. It’s disrupted, by a glitch.

It makes Hux’s bored mind stutter and her cold-numb body shudder out of sleep. Sensations leak back inside her as she looks at the pale buildings of Chester Gate casted orange by the streetlights, like Grecian idols of lifeless marble. This street is pristine: carved hedges, lights out past nine and black cars at the curb though there is no one to take from the door. But a single balcony remains open tonight.

Cigarette smoke tints the air, coloured amber by the streetlamps that fail to reach past the second floor, leaving the two above in the dark. It blurs the borders of colour, seeping from the light of a third-floor balcony that traces the silhouette of a girl. She exhales and her shoulders slouch underneath a black tank top hanging from her broad, pale shoulders. Her head hands over the balcony railing between her folded arms, drooping black hair like washed linens on a line. Her naked thighs are visible behind the rails, hips lifted toward the balcony doors, knees rubbing together.

It’s cold, for this February weather, but she is stood there, smoking the stub in her fingers.

Hux walks toward the flats and stands underneath the anomaly. The Regent’s park is a black familiar mass at the end of the street, full of the same paths that will lead her to another inevitable day.

This girl, standing on the balcony in shreds of worn-through underwear, like a stain on the whitened walls of these buildings, is not known to her.

“Hey,” Hux tries, tipping her head to the orange-black sky, seeing shadows of the girl’s lazy face. “You look bored.” She gauges the her for a response, but the cigarette is tapped off and Hux is given no more as the girl shifts from foot to foot.

“What if I said I could change that look on your face?” Hux prompts her as smoke trails in the dim light. She walks closer to the foot of the building where the black spikes of the fences ward the girl. “Come down,” Hux calls. “We could go somewhere. You can tell me all about why you are up there looking so pitiful.”

It seems a relief to speak with a purpose. Hux doesn’t want to stop. “Why are you pulling such a puppy face? Don’t leave me like this.” Hux raises her voice as she says, “What? Are you scared of a stranger? My name is Hux. See? We aren’t strangers anymore.”

The girl on the balcony pushes her hair back, fisting it behind her ear, giving Hux a show of her pale cheeks and lips wrapped on the cigarette. Though she is close, Hux can’t see her eyes, the marks she imagines underneath them, the specific colour of her lips.

The light of the cigarette is taken from the girl’s mouth and licked through the air to the railing of the balcony where it is rubbed into the black paint.

“Come down, princess.” Hux nods to the pavement, refusing to take her hands from her woollen wrap coat. “Come down and keep me warm.”

Hux smiles when she hears the balcony doors shut. The sound of a television comes on, volume brought up high.

 

 

The anomaly becomes a reoccurring phenomenon. Hux thought the girl would be gone the following Thursday. But she is standing underneath the balcony within a week, watching the wind pull a white t-shirt from the girl’s body, showing her naked chest underneath. She has a glass with her from which she drinks slowly.

The girl is still out of place, with mottled hair and bare legs in the cold weather. Hux is watching her underwear pinch between her thighs when she decides to call out to the girl again.

“What are you doing up there, princess?” she shouts in the dark February street. “How do you have the money to live in a place like this? Are mummy and daddy paying for it? Or are they out for the night leaving their baby girl all on her own?”

The figure on the balcony squirms, taking a deep gulp from the glass that clacks on the railing.

“Why don’t you come down here so we can talk? Don’t leave me so lonely,” Hux swallows, smiling, “gorgeous girl.”

There is a sniffle as the girl turns away to the dark blot of Regent’s park. Hux knows this should make the girl uncomfortable, but the boredom makes her cruel. Besides, it must be warmer in the flat than standing in your t-shirt and underwear on a balcony in the winter cool. If she doesn’t like it, the girl can go inside.

“Are you too good for me?” Hux urges her, swaying on her feet on the curb of the street, flanked by the glossy black cars at her sides. “Do you just like watching things go by, like the untouchable little pretty thing you are?”

The haze is thick, a night of clouds and deep shadows. But Hux knows the girl’s eyes are fixed on her. The cigarette is burning too close, illuminating the girl’s lips, held tight in a frown.

“Come down here, princess,” Hux smirks and tilts her face to the light of the street. “Let me show you how I can make you feel.” She doesn’t know if she means it, but she wants the girl to say something. It doesn’t matter how she gets there.

For a moment, Hux thinks she will come down, meet her in the street. But the girl touches the glass to her mouth and tips her head back, turning to the door as she smacks her lips.

Hux shakes her head, laughing, and walks on, to the park, looking back at the balcony to watch the girl’s ass in tight black underwear.

 

 

Every Thursday, Hux walks quicker to Chester Gate. The girl is there, in the ambient darkness of the streetlights beneath the balcony. Sometimes she is in a tank top, or a t-shirt with underwear drooping down her ass. Sometimes she wears a dressing gown that looks too good for the state of her. If she isn’t smoking, or drinking, she is staring at the windows across the street with her chin planted in her palm.

She always makes a point of not looking at Hux. But, sometimes, Hux catches her turning the big, sleepy eyes down at the street as she calls the girl down.

“Come on, princess. Come with me. What are you waiting for up there?”

She never answers, but Hux can guess what a girl like her with shitty clothes and unwashed hair is doing in a flat in the centre of London with a garden and a loft.

“You look so pretty,” Hux tells her one night. “And I’m just so cold. You must be warm, standing there, looking like _that_.”

The girl is watching her with a hand on her cheek, naked legs rubbing together. There is a bottle between the rails. Hux wonders how the drink has coloured her face. It’s taking longer for the girl to go back inside. She is not hiding that she is staring at Hux, basking like a little bird in the sun of her words.

But when the wind gets colder, the girl leaves with the spark of a lighter at her lips as the cherry of a cigarette winks between her fingers. Her face disappears like a snapshot in the brief flash of light, but it burns in Hux’s eyes as she turns down the street.

 

 

The weather is warming for spring and Hux drags her walk through Chester Gate longer and longer. Sometimes, the girl on the balcony does not see her at once, when her arms are folded underneath her head and her overgrown, knotted hair hangs down.

Sometimes, Hux stands on the street and watches her on the foreground of the television static coming from the flat.

 

 

Hux knows that the position of a TA is a necessary step for her progression. It will be a slugging progress, semester after semester of disinterested faces and information that has become history for Hux. She knew she would hate it, and she does; she is being delayed, by individuals who have no ambition but insist on falling in her way.

It grinds on Hux, tugging on her with each day she spends in seminars and lectures cycling the same information. It pulls her from focusing – breaking her routine, her progress. It makes her rabid with fury.

Hux knows what she has been taught: keep compromised emotions behind tight lips, remain quiet. She knows this as she passes Chester Gate. She shouldn’t look up. But she sees the blot of the girl’s body against the balcony rails, watching her come up the street. Hux’s mouth opens like an animal.

“Are you not bored of standing there yet?” Hux shouts to the girl with burning sweat on her neck.

The girl jolts. Today, she is dressed in leggings and a black t-shirt. Still, somehow inappropriate – too vulgar, too rough on the landscape of white walls and closed windows.

“Who are you moping for? Clearly this isn’t your home. How could a rat like you afford it?” Hux stares at the girl and the smoke trail from her hand. “Are you waiting for your man to get back?” She doesn’t know if she means it as she says it, but she can’t stop herself.

The girl is motionless on the balcony.

“Is that what it is? Does he keep you until he decides he needs you?”

Silence.

“Are you just his pretty thing on the side?”

The girl looks away. Th evening light is enough for Hux to see her wide eyes and pinched lips.

“How much does he pay you?” Hux’s voice is rising, breaking on the words. “What favours do you do for him that he keeps you here? I wonder how easy it was to get you. I believe he hardly had to wave a finger at you.”

When she hears it, Hux doesn’t recognise it. She doesn’t realise it’s the girl’s voice. Hoarse with smoke and tears.

“Well why don’t you stop wondering and just _shut the fuck up_!” her words become a screech as her fist meets her hair. Hux can see her chest heave under the t-shirt.

“Shut up—Shut up—Shut up— _Shut the fuck up_ , you fucking stupid bitch—!” the girl screams and hits the hand holding the scrunched cigarette on the railing.

Windows light up; the girl’s wailing is waking the street. Hux doesn’t wait to see it. She turns from the balcony and walks, footsteps cracking in the enclosed street. Her shoulders flinch to her ears when sound shatters with the closing balcony doors. Hux doesn’t turn back as she enters Regent’s park.

 

 

The days are longer and warmer the next week. But Hux’s walk from campus home becomes quicker. She is fixed on the passing pavement and the sensation of her bag on her shoulder, cutting with the weight of folders and a laptop.

Hux is rigid as she hears a lighter click and a soft breath in Chester Gate.

There are insects in the streetlamps, like embers catching light in the evening. The birds are sleepless. Hux can’t appreciate this; the balconies are dark, but the silhouette of white is unmissable. It’s a stain that burns Hux. A firefly is wavering by the railing.

Hux comes to the balcony and hates herself for being there. She reprimanded herself for days by excusing herself from breaks to work. Not for what she had done, but for thinking about it. The girl deserved it anyway.

Light switches on in the flat. The girl turns around, dropping the cigarette onto the grass below the building. Light passes through her t-shirt, silhouetting the curve of her soft stomach and breasts.

“Kylo, darling, what are you doing out there again?”

“Nothing,” the girl says, her arms slung on the rail, back to street. “I was doing nothing.”

A man divides the curtains between the balcony and living room. His back is bowed forward over his bloated stomach underneath a sweater with a stiff with collar cutting his neck. He is as expired as the professors Hux meets in the campus corridors.

“Don’t you remember how upset you were yesterday? Come,” the man says while reaching for the girl. His words come kindly, but he is stiff with the expectation of refusal. “You should come inside.”

Hux steps out of the balcony light as the girl comes to the man’s arms. He takes her up, pinching her body to his, putting a palm to her back that doesn’t wait to come to the waistband of her underwear. Hux turns away when she hears the muffled smack of lips and a deep grunt.

They are speaking, the girl’s voice beneath the man’s. Cloth brushes cloth and bare feet totter. Hux thinks she will be sick if she watches the balcony doors close behind them.

 

 

Hux has been leaving her coat at home, wearing trainers instead of leather boots. The days are getting brighter and spring rains are passing for summer’s heat. The school year will soon be done and Hux will move onto other work, waiting for September to follow. But every day, the walk to and from UCL is becoming longer.

It isn’t as though Hux has compromised her route by circling streets, creating loops in traffic. She isn’t willing to undermine herself. She isn’t willing to lose routine for an anomaly. Every day she passes Chester Gate. But her feet drag as she approaches the street, eyes unfocused on the flagstones at her feet.

Dread pulls on Hux’s throat on Thursday evenings, holding her rigid in the lecture theatre. She spits arguments with her feet as she walks past the museums and libraries, between the flat complexes toward Regent’s park.

Guilt is picking between Hux’s ribs. But she does not admit its presence and she does not look up as she passes Chester Gate. She isn’t needed here. She has no interest. She will do as she is told: she will fuck off.

Sometimes, Hux flinches at a click that might have been a light – the flint wheel turning for a spark.

 

 

The may heat was brief, and the sky is casted over like it’s winter again. Hux’s neck is bare to the wind and her knuckles are red with it. But she refuses to feel cold as her mind becomes a slurry, losing track of numbers that are meant to indicate deadlines.

It’s night. Much later than Hux is meant to be finished on a Thursday. She isn’t certain of the hours she has slept; somehow, night and early morning became a rerun of Planet Earth and stacking coffee mugs.

Door jambs creak. Feet slip on bare floor.

Hux stops. Her lip is ripped between her teeth. She moves, feet dripping shadows in the orange streetlights onto the white walls of the flats. But her shoes catch on a crack between flagstones and she almost tips. She needs to move. She needs to go—

Hux curses through her teeth as she looks up.

The third-floor balcony view is gone in the shadow of a tree’s foliage. Gaps of orange light show the contours of the frame, where the firefly of embers hovers. It doubles and smoke catches in the sepia light.

“Kylo?” Hux doesn’t know if she is heard, when the wind comes down through the street; she won’t shout again. “He called you that, right?”

The firefly doesn’t move when the branches bend under the wind.

“I didn’t think you would actually—” Hux coughs on a dry scrape in her throat. “I didn’t—I didn’t think.”

Hux won’t apologise—She won’t. “You know what I said is the truth. He is keeping you on the side,” Hux explains to the girl though she knows Kylo is aware of her choice. “Is he offering you something? Is—Is he paying you?”

Silence. The light doesn’t move. Hux keeps waiting. The girl does nothing.

Hux steps between the black cars, toward the balcony, coming under the spotlight of the streetlamp. “Whatever it is, it won’t be worth it, Kylo. I’m sure you don’t want to be up there.”

The red pinprick in the dark darts, scraping against something. The branches move above the streetlamp and the broken sepia orange crawls up the white wall. The girl is scratching the cigarette stub beside her arm on the rail, drawing lines with ash as her nose twitches, trying to hide the wet glisten on her lip.

“Kylo—?” Hux mutters and the girl turns.

The cigarette stub is twisted between her fingers, numb with shakes that are coming up her arms, shoulders, to her chin as the girl’s eyes drip in the orange light. She looks at Hux, teeth peeking between her lips. The wet tracks on her cheeks are reaching her chin, trailing black on red.

Hux can’t keep watching her. “Kylo,” she tries again. “Look after yourself.”

The wind shudders Hux as she enters Regent’s park. Her feet drag on the gravel path until she stops. The sleeve of Hux’s jacket is becoming damp as she wipes her face against it. She doesn’t know who she is crying for.

 

 

The balcony is empty. The next Thursday and the one that follows. Hux wants to be happy, to have no one to shout to.

 

 

Summer is burning on Hux’s neck, even with night closing tightly around her. She is staring at the balcony. The sound of news is static within the flat. It offers nothing to her.

 

 

She doesn’t call out. She will not allow it.

 

 

The semester is due to end, it’s just a stretch until the exam period. Hux’s mind is murmuring with schedules and names, blurring out the passing the campus corridors. The student union doors clack at her heels, but she is already gone down the steps before she acknowledges the sound.

The purple haze of summer has been setting sleep over Hux, running her on the fumes of the passing day. But her mind wont stop reeling, its churn muffling the buzz of streetlights coming to consciousness.

The flint wheel of a lighter scratches. Sparks crackle.

Silence breaks into the buzzing of Hux’s head. From the street corner, she can see the embers spark over and over, failing to catch. Feet in heavy boots scrape the flagstones of Chester Gate as shaking hands hold a lighter to a broken cigarette.

Hux’s footfalls fill the street as she walks toward the girl sitting on the front step of the bone white building underneath a black door. There is a backpack beside her, sagging against the glossy black rails with the zipper ripped from the greying fabric, showing the scattered belonging within. Her leggings are sagging at the knees, waistband tight on her stomach underneath the hoodie.

Elastic is peering through the red satin of the girl’s scrunchie, barely holding her hair from hanging into the lighter. But Hux pushes it back and the flame finally presses to the end of the cigarette, lighting Kylo’s face. Her lips are slack and eyes sore.

Kylo watches Hux crouch on the pavement, closing the lighter between them. Instead of thinking of what to say, Hux takes the backpack, pulling it over her shoulder. The weight of it is pathetic.

Hux holds her hands out to Kylo as ash grows on the end of her cigarette, the lighter loose in her fingers. Hux doesn’t believe it belongs to her, with the golden case and worn engravings. She can’t blame her for taking it.

Cold, damp palms with rough, scabbed patches fit into Hux’s. She squeezes them as she stands and pulls.

Kylo is in level with her, the dot of light between them in the dark street. Hux looks over the girl, gauging the differences between them. She wants to put her hands underneath the girl’s clothes, squeeze her waist and pull up her t-shirt, feel her skin and kiss her as she shakes.

Hux pulls her hands into the pocket of her coat, covering Kylo’s fingers with her palm. She walks toward Regent’s park, where light ends, with Kylo beside her.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ydnsm wanted a coda of a sort on how the girls go on..... not to worry. it will be all soft and gentle for them, even if they have some things to work through. also. yesterday was the 2 year anniversary of me submitting my first fic to this fandom weeheeeyy

The morning light stains Kylo’s back white. The moles on her skin are like soot that has caught in the follicles, becoming her. Hux watches the shadows of the curtains shift across Kylo’s spine. Her hair is thrown over her shoulders like an oil spill. It smells of sweat, grease – bodily and heavy. Her breathing is rattling through her thick chest, pushing up against her nose, then into the pillow.

Hux’s feet are hanging over the edge of bed, tethered in black trainers that have been allowing her to move quickest through London. Her shirt and linen trousers are already sticking to her skin. It’s barely eight in the morning. She doesn’t wonder why Kylo chooses to sleep bare.

The light is touching Kylo’s nape through her hair, lighting the freckles and moles. There is a red line across the skin, where the shoelace weighed by the key to the flat rubbed her neck as Kylo yanked on the string.

By default, the key goes into Kylo’s mouth, chipping molars and the gap of her front teeth when her face goes red with stress. It replaces a cigarette when she chews on it, scratching her lips red with the metal teeth.

It has been a month since Hux gave her the key, on a metal ring of its own. Two since Hux told Kylo to pull her boots off and get into bed. No, it doesn’t matter that she smells of cigarettes. Kylo hasn’t smoked since then, but she flicked the lighter. On, off, on, off, rubbing the engraving as she waited for Hux on the front step of the building.

Hux hated that thing, hated the sound it made. _Shi-chink. Shi-chink_. She heard it in bed, at two in the morning when kylo would not sleep.

It went away when Hux gave her the key, pushed it across the table at breakfast when Hux was about to leave the flat. Kylo, in ratty underwear and stained t-shirt, stared at Hux. Her large brown eyes were watering.

“Here,” Hux told her, “I’ll be delayed today. Work has an extra load.” With the academic year over, Hux changed work until September. It meant Hux and Kylo came home at the same time, but anomalies cannot be avoided.

“It’s for me?” Kylo reached for the key but didn’t touch it.

“Yes.” Hux took Kylo’s hand and pressed he key into her palm, indenting it with red.

Kylo tried to return the key that night, but Hux pinched her lips and shoved the key into the back pocket of Kylo’s jeans.

She still doesn’t use it. Not when Hux is late home by an hour, or two. Not when she comes after the streetlights replace the sun. Kylo sits on the front step of the building, head to her knees and hoodie sleeves over her fists – thumbs through the chewed holes.

Hux doesn’t understand it. Perhaps doesn’t even want to understand. Why had Kylo gone red to the line of her t-shirt when Hux paid for the week’s food instead of using Kylo’s scrunched five-pound notes Hux saw her count out while they were at the checkout. Kylo didn’t speak after, or when she scarfed down dinner, cleaning the plate despite gagging from how full she was. As though she was apologising.

They spoke in bed, at the opposite ends of the mattress. But when the lights went out and Hux was against Kylo’s back, she went tense. Hux soothed her with touches on her arms, stomach, rubbing her spine under the pyjama t-shirt. She waited for Kylo to say she is uncomfortable. Hux knew she wanted her to stop. But Kylo never asked. Hux wanted her to, kept pawing her shoulder blades. But Kylo was only silent. Hux stopped.

She doesn’t understand what makes Kylo let her put a hand down the back pocket of her jeans in public, but won’t let her accept a drink from Hux without first staring in expectation between the glass and Hux. What does she wait for? Why does she think Hux is doing this?

After months, Kylo has not accumulated belongings. What she has, she keeps under the bed – shoved into her backpack, boots beside the dresser when she sleeps. Those shoes are falling apart, soles crumbling rubber on the pavement as she walks. Where the vinyl has creased around her ankle the fabric has cut her skin, scratching marks that Hux covers with her hands when Kylo sleeps on the sofa, her legs curled against Hux’s side while her chin is on her shoulder.

Hux offered to buy a new pair. She spent an evening scrawling through sites, trying to find something she expected Kylo would like. She faltered on something leather and black, with buckles and thick soles. She called over Kylo to ask her size.

Stumbling from the kitchen with greasy fingers, Kylo came to the desk. She stared at the laptop as Hux spoke. Minutes passed before Hux realised nothing was coming through to her; Kylo’s face was red, stitched with blotches around her cheeks and eyes.

“If you don’t like them we can find something else,” Hux tried to amend, clicking off the page.

Kylo’s hand creaked on the back of the chair. Her lips were scrunched, teeth locking them together. She didn’t anything when she left the room, wiping at her nose. Hux didn’t move. She listened to Kylo in the hallway, the thumps of boots as she pulled them over her sore heels.

The key turned in the lock, but the handle didn’t click. It took another minute for Kylo to leave the flat.

She did come back, late at night. A shopping bag was set on the kitchen table, something rolled in the thin plastic. Kylo came into the bedroom as sat on the mattress beside Hux while she read on her laptop. Kylo reached toward her and slowly took Hux’s hand into hers. It was cold and damp.

It took two weeks to push Kylo toward the subject. It isn’t any trouble for Hux to spend money; she has enough savings to use them freely. Kylo watched her with discomfort as she spoke and finally agreed to half price work boots. Soon, a lanyard replaced the shoelace around Kylo’s neck which left her hobbling in one undone vinyl boot.

Kylo didn’t throw out the old shoes. She left them under the bed; as though she is waiting for Hux to rip the new boots from her feet. She stuffs them with objects: cards and receipts, change in plastic bags and cash in torn envelopes. She didn’t let Hux see it, but she found it anyway.

It’s part pride that makes Kylo refuse her. Though she has stopped shutting down when Hux offers to take the bill (food, clothes, drinks they go through at the bar), she still turns her nose up when Hux refuses to take rent (not until Kylo can move on from the job of pressing waffles at a breakfast café).

The light is growing brighter. Kylo turns onto her chest, a yawn stretches her jaw. She pulls the sheets toward her shoulder, bearing her legs in turn. Kylo doesn’t need to be up today, but Hux wants to see her before she leaves.

Hux pushes her hand under the covers, pressing her hand to Kylo’s back. Her skin is soft with sleep, warm from the sheets and the sun. She is limp as Hux pushes her.

“Kitten,” Hux whispers and leans over the bed. “Kitten, wake up.” She crawls up the mattress, keeping her feet tipped up to avoid smudges, and plants a kiss on the back of Kylo’s neck. She holds the touch longer than she must.

Kylo grunts into the pillow and coughs. Her hair tangles on her face as she turns over. “Morning,” she mumbles, spitting out her curls. Her eyes are drooping, sleepy, dark eyelashes damp.

Hux leans down on her elbows, keeping a hand on Kylo’s back, and kisses her. Kylo’s lips are cracked from snoring, her mouth is slack with sleep. But she isn’t hesitant to bite into Hux’s lip with the chipped edges of her teeth. Hux is pulled along with the tug until she is tipped onto the bed.

“That’s what kittens do,” Kylo says at the glare on Hux’s face.

A sharp slap to Kylo’s ass jolts her on the bed. Her legs kick up and eyes widen as her cheeks gather colour. Hux grins at her, but loses the smugness when teeth close on her throat and an arm hooks on her neck, dragging onto the bed. Hux moans and scratches her nails up the meat of Kylo’s ass. Laughter echoes against her throat.

Hux realises she won’t leave the flat early and that she won’t take a reason to stay behind after work. Though it’s Thursday, she won’t spend tonight at home. Hux will watch Kylo giggle as she struggles to take a shot of tequila at the bar, spilling most of it onto the sopping mat. She will sip a margarita and listen to Kylo babble and bite her tongue. Maybe she will learn Kylo’s age, her favourite movie, why she speaks with American slang.

They will be slurring when they go home under the orange streetlights, tying their tongues like their legs, but their hands will be together.

 

 

 

 


End file.
